Brandon Laskowski 
Everywhere you look on this custom is like a new experience you didn’t notice the first time. Made as a gift to his girlfriend District Customs brought the feel of a very loved decade in this custom Nike Lebron 9 titled What the 90s. The hand painted effort using the Summit Lake Hornets colorway as a base combined numerous patterns, so many that we are not gonna count.
Before PaintOrThread the first blog dedicated to custom sneakers was 2000words. Ran by Kevin Moore the site updates ultimately succumbed to life’s responsibilities. Luckily some of the content was salvageable. Allowing sneaker customizers of today a way to look back on their past or to give a glimpse of what came before them. Just perfect for Sneaker Customizer Throwback Thursday.
If this shoe looks familiar and you never saw it the first time in 2008 or spotted them in the streets, what you saw likely was not authentic. These are from a time when the Nike Dunk was the choice shoe amongst both sneaker customizers and sneakerheads. DEZ, a graffiti artist known for putting his work on everything from walls to kicks, made these “Do the Dew” Nike Dunks as a complementary piece to his Mountain Dew Green Label Art winning bottle design.
If you are up on your sneaker-customizer-following-Instagram-game or diehard Vans fan you likely know the name MonsterMac Designs and his plethora of accurately detailed Vans customizations. He often shares progress shots of each 1 of 1 pair he creates on a nearly daily basis. To kickoff the revival of Customizer Workspace Wednesday’s MM has allowed PaintOrThread to share with the rest of the world where boring all white canvas kicks become one of a kinda wearable MonsterMac Designs.
The stigma of customizing a high dollar after market sneaker went out the door sometime last year starting with customized Yeezy IIs and a pair of these same Nike Air Mags. Sneakerheads that will never get these shoes are probably crying “Why ruin a classic wah wah wah!” But a driving factor of customs is that they aren’t meant for everyone, and often times they are designed for one person. But surely this Air Mag by Kickasso Kustoms modeled after the “Elite” concept used on Nike’s premier basketball models would fly off the shelves in 2015 self-lacing or not.
What DOES love got to do with it? Everything, right? The theme of love, summer love that is, comes back around again from Ecentrik Artistry for 2013. Previous Summer Love collection of custom sneakers from EA were on Nike models like Air Force 1s and Air Max 90s. This time the oh so popular Air Jordan V catches the love bug. Using two recent retros of the AJ V in white/black/red and “Grape” Ecentrik created a whole new look for the shoe.
Off the sneaker customization radar since about late 2010 theMenace is back with all new recon custom sneakers. You may remember his work that made some noise as full reconstructions of the Vans Sk8 Hi. Well some of the materials he used are the same but base model different being that of the Air Jordan I. TheMenace gave the iconic AJ 1 silhouette a look of what was probably worn with them originally quite often in those mid 1980s: acid wash denim.
Ever since PaintOrThread broke the Blacked Out Bred Air Jordan XI by Noldo Customs Instagram has seen numerous attempts of the design and our inbox has been full of how to make them. With the already mass release of the Air Jordan XI “Playoffs”, one restock under their belt and another this Saturday we can expect to see more and more of the simple customization.